Yes, thanks Tony, I'm very glad you said this. I agree entirely with what you've stated.
I recall seeing Chip's complete collection of enlisted feldgrau Ciphered shoulder boards in two large riker mount display cases in his collector room. I saw much of his cloth collection, but it was mostly a blur to me since I'm not an Imperial German cloth collector per say.
I wonder if anyone here knows the various pieces of the puzzle as to what transpired after his untimely demise? (I know parts of it, but probably not all of it. Others probably know better than I do about this.) How one good friend of his contacted me and told me the two boys supposedly didn't want his death published on the forums? And how one other person "took it upon himself" with publishing his death on at least 3-different forums? And how two collectors, Mike Ross and Charlie P., (the latter listed is his very good longtime friend, the very one who told me not to tell anyone of his demise on any of the forums, per what his boys requested) got into the collection with his two boys permission and cherry picked items, such as some of the shoulder boards, gasmasks, feldrau tunics, Garde camo helmets, potato mashers, beautiful Kar98 rifle, and other beautiful rare items, etc. Maybe they paid well, I don't really know, and don't really care. And how the collection was ultimately sold by the two boys, to a dealer because his two boys were literally hounded constantly by all sorts of people wanting to buy things. I was told by someone in the "know", that the boys told these two friends of his that they could pick out "10-items" to buy. Well, I saw some photos a few weeks ago and it looked like there was a whole lot more than a mere "10 items" that were purchased from what I saw in these photos from one of these two friends of Chip. I was amazed to see what all was purchased by one of these two guys. I laughed to myself and call it a "small fortune" as to the value of the items that I saw in the photos.
I found out recently from the dealer who bought Chip's collection that he probably won't start selling any of it until early in 2023. I had been hoping that some of it would start to be available for sale this summer of 2022, but it didn't sound like that will be the case. At least from what he said a few weeks ago when I spoke with him. Not sure if that will change or not with him in his sales schedule.
And the dealer told me that he's apparently going to publish a book that will show Chip's collection, which would be very nice.
Both Charlie P., and myself offered several times to help Chip do his book on feldgrau shoulder straps. Unfortunately when I offered to help, he was too sick with his battle, and didn't have the energy to work on it with either of us. He had probably the best enlisted fe